Real China: China Documentary Film Festival

Real China, a biennial film festival that brings new documentaries from China to the USA, will make its debut at Rice University in Houston October 22-24, 2010.

The Chao Center for Asian Studies will feature a film festival each semester to highlight a specific country, region, or issue within Asia.  Our first program will be the Real China documentary film festival. Real China, a biennial film festival that brings new documentaries from China to the USA, will make its debut in Houston October 22-24, 2010. Screenings will take place in Sewall Hall 301 on the Rice University Campus.

Friday, October 22, 2010, 7 PM Sewall Hall 301

1428 directed by Du Haibin (1 hour, 57 min)

Synopsis
The “Great Sichuan Earthquake” took place at 14:28 on May 12, 2008.
10 days after: Scenes not seen on official/TV, “survival” is the keyword. Ordinary people are salvaging destroyed pig farms in the mountains, recuperating cents-worth scrapped metals, or pillaging victims’ homes.  Behind the highly-mediatized official visits, inconsolable grief of families searching for loved ones.  Throughout, a vagabond in tattered clothes wanders among the ruins, observing tragic scenes. A monk and a Taoist visionary suggest: “the earthquake is the consequence of Earth-Gods no longer worshipped.”
210 days after: Harsh winter, villagers preparing for Lunar New Year, the Vagabond and family are detailing grievances about the ill-handling of rebuilding schemes and relief funds.  Gearing up for a high official’s visit, comes a thorough clean-up of the villages and tent-resettlement for refugees.  Promise made for all to live in houses in winter seems tough to keep.  Fake parts in the community transformer brought electricity blackout for New Year’s Eve reunion dinners. New Year Day starts as never-ending parade of tourists buying DVDs of the most horrific scenes, souvenir albums of corpses being pulled out of the ruins, and photo taking in front of BeiChuan, the town most severely hit, where over 70000 people perished in seconds.

Saturday, October 23, 2010, 1 PM Sewall Hall 301

Mouthpiece directed by Guo Xizhi (3 hours, 17 minutes)

Synopsis
The documentary unfolds in two parallel spaces: one, the Shenzhen TV news programme ‘First Spot’. In the news organization, the “mouthpiece” members live their work routines—they hold meetings, send articles, worry about viewing rates and market shares… the other, the city of Shenzhen. Outside the news organ, “the mouthpiece” folks walk out to the streets, and the city displays itself in all kinds of forms—all sorts of people deliver their misfortunes to the camera.

Saturday, October 23, 2010 7PM Sewall Hall 301

Disorder directed by Huang Weikai (58 minutes)

Synopsis
The faster Chinese urbanization advances, the stranger peoples’ behaviors and moral standards become. Disorder combines more than twenty street scenes into a collage, revealing absurd facets of Guangzhou’s urban life, giving us an experimental film about the city, in the spirit of Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Camera.

Sunday, October 24, 2010 4 PM Sewall Hall 301
Falling From the Sky directed by Zanbo Zhang

Synopsis

As a little-known place, Suining County lies directly in the path of falling debris from the Xichang Satellite Launching Base— one of the three Satellite Launching Bases in China. And for nearly 20 years, since 1990, it has been visited by those the dangerous “aliens” from the skies on ten occasions. The wreckage smashed into the tranquil lives of the 160,000 impoverished inhabitants of the landing area, destroying their fields and killing their livestock. The most tragic incident though, occurred in 1998, when one their own, a young girl of 16, was killed by falling debris.

2008 is the “Olympic Year” as well as the “Space Year” for China. While the people of Suining eagerly awaited the Olympic Games like their fellow countrymen and get proud of the development of their nation especially in space exploration they had to endure?the fate of missile wreckage falling on their heads.

Sunday, October 24, 2010 7PM Sewall Hall 301

A Song of Love, Maybe A Love Song, Maybe directed by Zhang Zanbo (1 hour, 54 min)

Synopsis
This is a much troubled female perspective love story. A KTV waitress is involved in a relationship with a customer who had come plainly for pleasure and relaxation. However, this relationship has been plagued from the very beginning by lies, desire, impetuosity, confusion and pain. The brightness and darkness of human nature, the warmth and coldness of the city staged themselves alternately and perpetually, just like those vulgar yet properly put pop songs the girl had grown so familiar with by working in KTV private rooms.